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VANCOUVER — Forced to retire from World Cup ski cross racing at just 23 after twice blowing out her right knee, Julia Murray says she hopes all those involved in the sport can find a way to minimize injuries.

The Whistler product, who won silver at the 2011 world championships while competing with a torn ACL, announced her retirement Friday, saying she didn’t want to risk further long-term injury that might threaten the active lifestyle she enjoys.

“The last couple of years for ski cross, there’s been too many injuries,” Murray said in an interview.

“It’s something we all love to do and I think with communication between athletes, coaches and course builders, it’s definitely possible to not have injuries in a race, especially if everybody talks about anything that is off in the course. I don’t think it has to be this dangerous.”

Nik Zoricic, a member of the Canadian men’s ski cross team, died in March in a freakish crash off the final jump at a World Cup race in Grindelwald, Switzerland.

But it’s the constant pounding on the legs and knees as skiers deal with challenging, body-tossing rollers, off-camber turns and ever-larger jumps that has taken a lengthy toll.

Murray and 2010 Olympic gold medallist Ashleigh McIvor of Whistler both sat out all of the 2011-2012 season with injured knees, 2011 world championship gold medallist Kelsey Serwa of Kelowna blew out a knee early in the campaign and team members Danielle Poleschuk and Georgia Simmerling were also injured.

Murray, the daughter of the late Dave Murray, a downhiller with Canada’s Crazy Canucks of the 1970s and ’80s, and Stephanie Sloan, a three-time world champion freestyle skier, switched to ski cross from alpine racing in 2008 and earned her first of three career podiums — a third-place finish in Meiringen, Switzerland — in March 2009.

She was third overall in the World Cup rankings as the 2010 Olympics neared when she crashed at a World Cup in Lake Placid, N.Y., a month before the Games, tearing her ACL and MCL. After a scope to clean up some meniscus damage and two weeks of intensive physio and rehab, she was outfitted with a knee brace and finished 12th on Cypress Mountain as ski cross made its Olympic debut.

“I just had to compete in the Olympics. It was one of the reasons why I was doing ski cross.”

She had surgery shortly after and was just rounding back into form in early 2011 when she crashed during X Games qualifying. An initial MRI only showed cartilage damage, so after getting the swelling down she went on to the worlds the next week in Deer Valley, Utah, and earned the silver medal behind Serwa.

Only after another MRI was done a couple of weeks later was it determined that she had a torn ACL and major cartilage damage and that her right knee was basically bone-on-bone.

“It just made me that much more proud of myself,” she says. “I had such a good day.

“Worlds and the Olympics are experiences I’ll never forget.”

After worlds, she had another full ACL reconstruction and microfracture surgery in which surgeons drilled 37 tiny holes in the tibia plateau in a procedure designed to spur cartilage regrowth.

She hasn’t skied in more than a year, which she concedes was tough given the incredible winter of snow in Whistler. But she says taking communications classes four days a week at Capilano University helped “keep me distracted from the amount of powder we had.”

She had planned on returning to ski cross, but says good talks with coaches, her surgeon and team doctors, during which she asked them to be truthful, convinced her it wasn’t in her best long-term interests to continue a competitive career. The scar tissue was still causing some discomfort and there were no guarantees the knee would hold up to the grind of ski cross.

“Longevity for me is more of a priority,” says Murray, just back from a two-night dirt bike ride to Onion Lake, north of Lytton. “I love being active and there’s just so much to do around Whistler.”

Besides dirt biking, mountain biking and powder skiing, she’d like to try kite surfing and also get involved in some coaching at the highly respected Dave Murray Ski Camps.

“It’ll be different,” she says of not facing the pressure and competitiveness of World Cup skiing. “But I’m excited.”

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